Our Last Days as Children
by littlelindentree
Summary: Beyond 4x13 "Thanksgiving," Becky deals with the fallout. Major spoilers for the end of S4! Becky/Luke.


If Becky entered a pageant tomorrow, she would have a brand new talent to showcase, one she was far more skilled at and passionate about than singing. She could picture it: she'd be waiting off stage, shivering with anticipation, as the emcee announced in a booming, enthusiastic voice:

"Ladies and gentlemen, representing Dillon, Texas, Miss Becky Sproles and her talent – _avoiding Luke Cafferty_!"

The crowd would cheer. They would not have seen anything quite like this before, Becky is certain.

It really is a talent. It's not easy to avoid someone in a small town, especially when you go to the same high school. Even worse when the guy who lived in the trailer in your mom's backyard, who was supposed to be your friend, would look at you sideways sometimes and say quietly, "Cafferty was asking about you again."

"Just... tell him I'm busy," Becky would shrug, running her restless thumb through the condensation on the side of her Diet Cherry Coke.

Tim would nod and tip his beer up to his mouth, and say nothing more. Tim may have been a loser as far as people in town were concerned, but Becky knew better. He was a good friend. He had helped her when she had no one to turn to, when she could barely even ask for help, and in her books that earned you a lot of friend points.

Becky requested a new locker at school, one up on the second floor, by the library, but the lady in the office just rolled her eyes and told Becky to quit fooling around and get to class. That left Becky down by the gym, where she honed her new talent by ducking around corners or burying her face in her locker every time she heard the football team troop noisily down the corridor.

That, coupled with ducking into empty classrooms and closets and strenuously avoiding all school activities, sometimes made it possible to pretend that Luke Cafferty did not exist, and in fact had never existed.

Weeks passed, and life carried on. Nobody knew that she was the student that everyone was so upset with Mrs. Taylor about, except somehow, because it was Dillon, _everybody_ knew. The girls at school looked at her like she was poisonous, like she was contagious, and the boys... Becky didn't like to think too much about what the boys said to her. Luke kept his distance, and Becky heard rumours that he might transfer to another school.

She worked very hard at pretending not to care about any of it.

The football season ended when the Lions were eliminated by the West Cambria Mustangs during the quarterfinals. All that awful stuff happened with Tim, and Becky was left friendless; a gulf of hurt, angry silence between her and her mother, and only a battered old snow globe on her bureau to cheer her up.

She longed to talk to someone, but the only person she could think of was Mrs. Taylor. She couldn't bear to approach her; she had almost cost the woman her job. Besides, Mrs. Taylor lived in West Dillon, and Tim wasn't around to drive her places anymore.

Becky was on her own. Just like always.

One morning in March she opened her locker and taped to the door, obscuring her class schedule, was a glossy catalogue photo of a baby. On it, someone had written the word "MURDERER" in angry red ink.

Silently, Becky removed the photo and folded it in half, and then in half again, before tucking it into her pocket. She closed her locker door and walked to class, staring straight ahead of her, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, refusing to give any of them the satisfaction.

She wondered how they had gotten her locker combination. She didn't understand why anyone would go to the trouble.

After school, she stood alone in the parking lot, waiting for her mom to pick her up. She was late, of course, and by the time she pulled up, cursing and apologising, everyone else was long gone.

Becky climbed into the passenger seat, buckled her seatbelt, and began to cry.

"What?" her mom asked her, alarmed. "What's wrong?"

Wordlessly, Becky shook her head and hugged her arms close to her body. Her mom stared at her across the car for a beat, then turned away and silently pulled out of the parking lot.

"Just forget about it," she said eventually, gripping the steering wheel tightly and frowning out at the road. "It's over and done with, so you need to just move on. We've got bigger things to worry about."

Becky nodded, silently wondering what if. _What if._ What if she'd decided to let a mistake become a baby? Would that baby have her brown eyes, or Luke's, blue like the morning sky before the hot sun washed it out? What if they never had sex in the first place; sex so fumbling and awkward that Becky was left wondering why anyone bothered? What if they had gone on a real date, a proper date, not the kind of date _sluts_ went on, and just held hands and drove around and maybe kissed? What if they had been boyfriend and girlfriend, and not rushed so painfully into all of these awful, hard things she now had to live with?

Becky brushed away the tear that slid down her cheek, hoping her mom couldn't see. What did any of it matter, anyway? Who even cared? Nobody. Nobody cared.

It figured, in an obnoxious, melodramatic kind of way, that she would finally stop being able to avoid him at the gas station where they had met in the first place, that stupid night when she nearly ruined her whole life.

Becky was shoulder-deep in one of the refrigerators at the back of the store, getting milk and diet soda for her mom. It was a Friday night, and the weather was starting to get warm again. Becky had walked alone to the store, her shoes kicking up dust along the long dirt road that led to her house.

When she stood up and tucked the carton of milk under one arm, she came face to face with Luke Cafferty. He was two feet away from her, and it was obvious he'd been watching her. He stood there in beat-up jeans and a plain t-shirt, his hair sticking up, his skin flushed from the heat. He had that boyishly cute look about him that had caught her attention all those months ago. He looked a little embarrassed to be caught, and Becky prickled.

"What do you want?" she muttered, looking away and closing the glass door with her hip.

"I uh, stopped for a drink," he said, manoeuvring around her to grab a Coke. Bottle in hand, he stood staring at her. "How are you?" he asked, after an awkward silence.

Becky shrugged indifferently. "Okay, I guess. You?"

"Been better," he replied. "You've been avoiding me, huh?"

"Not really," Becky scoffed. Here she thought she'd been stealthy.

"Yeah, you have. It's okay, I don't blame you. That whole thing with my mom and all... I'm sorry."

Becky shrugged again, hoping desperately that she seemed cavalier. Without replying, she stepped around him and walked to the cash register, hoping he might take the hint.

He didn't, dogging her steps as she passed a handful of bills to the clerk, and jogging to catch up with her outside once he paid for his drink.

"Wait up!" he called, crossing the parking lot to fall into step next to her. Becky ignored him, turning to head down the highway towards her place. "Can I give you a ride, at least? It's not safe to just be walking around on the highway after dark."

Becky stopped short and spared him a frustrated glance. "Maybe you forgot, but the last time you gave me a ride somewhere, it didn't work out so great."

Luke looked taken aback. "I was just trying to be nice."

Becky's quick anger deflated almost instantly, and she felt like a bitch. Luke had never asked for any of this, nor had he forced her to do anything she didn't want to do. He'd been nothing but kind to her through the whole thing, really. She just felt burned because at the end of the day, she was the one who had to live with the real consequences of their decisions.

"I know," she replied softly. "I just... This is hard."

He took a step towards her, offering to carry her groceries. "It's just a ride home. That's all – I swear. I have to go down that way to get to my place, anyway, and I wouldn't feel right leaving you on the side of the road like that."

Cautiously, Becky acquiesced with a tight nod, and followed Luke to his beat-up old F-150. She gingerly climbed in the passenger side, and was flooded with vivid sense memories of the night she lost her virginity in the cab of this very truck.

She steeled herself. No use getting hysterical at this point.

They drove in silence, Luke taking the route to her place without any need for directions from her. Eventually he pulled up at the end of her driveway and turned off the engine.

Becky didn't get out right away, instead staring out into the vast, rolling fields which disappeared off into the darkness beyond her house. The silence pulsed with awkwardness until finally Luke spoke.

"I think we should probably talk," he said.

"I don't think there's a lot to talk about, really," Becky replied lightly, digging her fingernails into her palm to keep her voice from wavering.

"Like I said, I'm sorry about the whole thing with my mom," Luke continued, undeterred. "I'm sure kids at school must be giving you a hard time."

Shifting in her seat, Becky felt paper crinkle in her pocket, and remembered the picture she had been carrying around with her for several days. She would have ignored it, except Luke was the first person to say that to her, to acknowledge that this was hard, that people did not take this well, that she was now a pariah in her own hometown, and that no one would have known were it not for him and his mother.

"Someone put this in my locker," Becky said hesitantly, carefully unfolding the picture of the baby. She handed it to Luke, who stared down at it, his face wan. "Do you think that's true? That I'm a murderer?"

Luke was silent for a long moment. Finally, he looked up and met her eyes. "No, I don't think you're a murderer."

Becky nodded. "But do you think I did the right thing?"

"I don't see how you could have done anything else," Luke replied earnestly. Becky searched his face, and could not find a lie there.

Silence fell between them, and Becky did not try to fill it.

"It was my first time," Luke said quietly after a lengthy pause, his hands clenched tightly on the steering wheel and his eyes staring off into the middle distance. "I never did that with anybody before."

Becky looked at his profile for a long moment, worrying her lip. She could lie to him. Maybe it would make him feel better, feel _manly _or something, to think that none of it had ever mattered at all. She could do that. She could lie to him. He looked over and met her gaze, his forlorn expression so naked that it startled her.

"Mine, too," she said haltingly, not taking her eyes off him.

"I'm really sorry," he mumbled, looking down again.

"For what? You didn't _do_ anything to me. I was there, too."

"Yeah, but... I'm sorry for everything. That's all."

"I'm sorry, too," Becky replied.

Luke looked up, scrutinizing her so closely that she became embarrassed, clearing her throat and brushing an errant curl behind her ear. "I wish..." he began, so softly she almost didn't hear him. He shook his head, unable to continue.

"I wish, too," Becky said. She reached down, and took his hand in hers.

When Luke looked up at her, he was smiling. Becky smiled back.


End file.
